Gasps and screams of shock can be heard after the statement of JFK’s
death, and after the change of programme is announced there is a general
panicked hubbub that takes its time to subside. Then, as the orchestra
begins its funeral dirge more slowly than is usual, every note throbbing
with pain, there is only a numbed quiet as the news, the awful reality,
sinks in.

Eriksson didn’t realise it then, but he was embarking on one of the internet’s
most enduring puzzles; a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical
locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the "darknet”.
So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and
classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian
occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology.

An artist has "made headlines by assembling picture frames made of human placentas. She does it by boiling a whole placenta, grinding it into pieces, mixing it with resin, then shaping the mixture into a frame. It’s a keepsake for new parents, like a baby’s first blanket."

gif of an exploding whale (on shore and dead, full of the gases of decomposition). I also found this report of the event while trying to research the name of the tool used to cut the whale open (I remember it starts with FL---) [flensing knife - hat tip to reader Oreneta].

I've written I think several posts in the past about how classical artists such as Vermeer almost certainly used camera obscura to help compose their paintings. Vanity Fair has a long, detailed, well-written article on this subject.

A study of the distribution of coprolites indicates that some dinosaurs used "communal latrines." Apparently this is not unexpected: "Elephants, antelopes and horses are among modern animals who defecate in
socially agreed hotspots - to mark territory and reduce the spread of
parasites." You learn something every day.

Yet still another list of best movies. In this one, critic Barry Norman lists (alphabetically) the best 49 British films. Readers were invited to choose the 50th (they voted for Slumdog Millionaire).

The testes are inside the body, instead of outside in a scrotum. (Other mammals in the internal-testes club, since you asked, include the armadillo, sloth, whale, and platypus.) This makes the hippo's testes totally invisible from the outside. Combined with a penis that the paper's authors describe as "discreet," it means it's hard to tell males from females at a distance.

When should you use "utilize," or should you just utilize "use"? ("the real problem is the new twist in the rule's formulation -- the idea that if utilize means "repurpose" it can only mean that, and plain old use can never mean that...)

Bottom: Dr. Matthew S. Lehnert and Ms. Catherine P. Mulvane,
Kent State University at Stark,
North Canton, Ohio - "Tip of the proboscis of a Viceroy butterfly. The protruding structures are chemosensilla used for tasting sugary fluids."

13 comments:

I am discussing some of these links "live" with a friend on Skype ... for the "most frustrating tongue twister", she makes the interesting point that the difficulty of a tongue twister should be measured NOT by how difficult it is to say fast, but rather, by the speed at which it becomes difficult. In other words, she argues the best tongue twisters are those that are still difficult even when said relatively slowly. I think it's a fair point.

From the interactive birdsong poster, I learned that the rose-breasted grosbeak sounds a lot like the Australian magpie. I did not know that. I would like to see similar charts for birds of other parts of the world.

Yes, the posted tongue-twister didn't phase me much. Over the years, the one I've found that is really, really difficult to say with any haste is "Black Bug Blood." Try that 3 times at speed.Or even slow.

I found the idea of dinosaurs using communal latrines fascinating, esp. given the habit of several mammal species to do the same. We recently looked after some turtles from school during the summer holiday and I quickly noticed that almost all of the time, they - stupid reptiles and all - defecated in the small part of the tank that had little pebbles on the bottom. This implied a decision-making process. Turtles were around in the time of the dinosaurs, if memory serves.

These hackaday articles discuss in detail:http://hackaday.com/2012/07/07/keyless-bmw-cars-prove-to-be-very-easy-to-steal/http://hackaday.com/2013/06/05/ask-hackaday-how-are-these-thieves-exploiting-automotive-keyless-entry/

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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